PRINCETON – More money was added Tuesday to an opioid settlement fund when the Mercer County Commission was presented over $341,000 out of lawsuit settlements from drug manufacturers that created opioid pain medications fueling addiction epidemics across West Virginia.
Attorney H.Truman Chafin of The Chafin Law Firm, which has represented southern West Virginia counties in the opioid lawsuits, started off the county commission’s meeting by presenting a check totaling $341,446.50.
In December 2023, Chafin came to the Mercer County Airport and presented a check for nearly $2 million to the county commission and last January, he stopped again at the airport to present another settlement check, that time for $678,148. Mercer County currently has around $2.6 million in opioid funds.
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More money from legal action against opioid manufacturers could be coming to West Virginia’s counties, Chafin said at Tuesday’s meeting.
There have been two settlements that could benefit Mercer County, the Purdue settlement and the Secondary Manufacturers settlement, he said. West Virginia’s shares will be distributed to the state’s local governments through the memorandum of understand with the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office.
Mercer County is a plaintiff in the Pharmacy Benefits Managers case pending in the U.S. District Court Northern District of West Virginia, Chafin said. This case just involves West Virginia local governments and is set for trial at the end of 2026.
The county will continue to receive checks from the opioid case settlements, but the amounts will keep getting smaller, he said. There have been two more recent settlements that will also be paid to Mercer County, but it is difficult to predict how much more money this will bring in.
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Soon after Chafin departed, the commissioners unanimously approved a resolution authorizing an expenditure from the county’s opioid settlement fund. This $44,602 grant will let Mercer County 911 expand paging services to the county’s volunteer fire departments.
”I know that our volunteer fire departments are going to be extremely excited about this as well,” Lockhart said.
The county’s only firefighters paging system is on East River Mountain’s tower, but the opioid money will expand that service to towers at Windmill Gap and Flat Top Mountain. Due to the county’s rural terrain, pager signals don’t always reach volunteer firefighters. The expanded system will provide more coverage and increase response times when 911 gets calls about overdoses and other emergencies, Lockhart said.
The current plan is to have the three towers equipped with new paging equipment by the spring of 2026, Lockhart said earlier. Local fire departments are equipped with Narcan, a medication which for treating opioid overdoses.
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”This is an exceptional way to spend some of the opioid funds,” said Commissioner Greg Puckett. “They’ve got to get there quickly and time is everything when you have an overdose.”
County Commission President Bill Archer said that the county has to meet exacting state requirements when allocates opioid settlement money. He thanked Lockhart for her patience while the commission drafted a resolution to make sure these requirements were met.
”I agree with Greg that it’s a great asset for Mercer County and the 911 system,” he said about the pager grant.
Commissioner Brian Blankenship, a former firefighter with the Green Valley-Glenwood Volunteer Fire Department, told Lockhart that he could remember times when there was no paging system and getting radio signals was difficult. Having a better paging system makes first responders and Mercer County’s citizens safer, he said.
Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
[SRC] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/opioid-settlement-payment-presented-mercer-035900226.html
